We have spent most of Mila's school years trying to catch up with her sighted peers. When you are born legally blind, there is truly no frame of reference to most things we all see every day. We spend endless hours describing the most simple things in life.

During the school year, most of this time is spent catching up on areas covered in school that sighted peers are able to grasp simply. We have used our CC4C funds on private Braille tutoring. Many have never had to understand this area of a medium, but there is another code called Nemeth that is used for math.

Along with Braille and Nemeth is the technology that goes with both codes. It truly takes years to master all these techniques. When Covid-19 hit the United States in March of 2020 and the school systems shut down and online, this made an already challenging situation almost unmanageable. When you cannot see your teacher online and you do not have a Teacher of Vision Impairment with all the manipulatives, it makes learning even more difficult.

With Mila's private Braille tutoring, time at home to learn at her own pace and many hours of working past school hours, it finally paid off. She was assessed at the end of this last school year. She progressed two grades years in one! After talking to other professionals in the vision area, this is incredibly rare.

We've seen this progression aid in Mila's confidence, working with groups at school and start this school year in a very positive way! We did not stop our tutoring over the summer and are continuing to see this kind of progress. We consider this progress and Mila's happiness as a total win. 

Close family and friends know how truly incredible this is since Mila was diagnosed with Microcephaly at birth. We were told she may never walk, talk or even eat solid foods.